The Women DVD Review

This remake feels more like a Sex and the City knockoff than a reinvention of Cukor's classic.

Even with all its scenes of heartfelt emotion and episodes of astounding melodrama, there is a moment in The Women that is so unexpected it deserves special mention. About 15 minutes into the film, two women are having a discussion -- the subject of which I don't remember. But just as they are about to bond in the spirit of universal sisterhood and share secrets that will unite them for life, a dog runs between them, upsetting the momentum of the conversation and transitioning to a montage of a party as it grinds into full swing. The reason for this sequence's significance? It marks the only time in the entirety of the film that its characters stop talking.

A movie that makes you long for the crass exuberance of Sex and the City, if only because it so poorly steals from that series' lexicon of designer labels and forward-thinking (read: backwards) females, The Women is a horrible, cliched manifestation of every awful impulse Hollywood ever had to cater to female moviegoers, made worse by the fact that its writer, director and all of its stars are all women themselves.

New Line and Warner Brothers make a point to mention both the widescreen and fullscreen versions of the film are included on the same disc. In this age of high-definition displays, is it even necessary to cater to fans of both a cropped and chopped aspect anymore? Regardless, it's a flipper disc; the picture on the widescreen side turns out to be too dark in most of the scenes, along with a healthy amount of grain and pixilation. Jaggies show up in objects like horizontal stripes on a shirt and in pillars. The publicity photos on the back of the case are brighter and more realistic looking than the film, sadly.

Score: 4 out of 10

Languages and Audio

Either I'm getting old or this English 5.1 track didn't do its job properly. For the entirety of the movie, dialogue isn't loud enough, especially considering the volume level the receiver was set to. Scenes involving music come off much better, but those are few and far between. There is no distortion getting in the way of the audio; it's simply a mixing problem. Other dialogue-driven films perform nicely with the same exact settings. Directional effects are present, if you care to strain to hear them. I broke down and watched the last half hour of the film with the optional English (Spanish also available) subtitles.

Score: 4 out of 10

Extras and Packaging

The Women comes packed in a standard keepcase with an insert with instructions for downloading a digital copy of the film. The disc starts with a handful of ads and trailers not available from the main menu: a generic Warner Brothers "Don't Pirate Movies" ad, a Warner Blu-ray promo, an anti-smoking public service announcement and trailers for He's Just Not That Into You and Nights in Rodanthe.

The full list of extras includes:

Delicious Additional Scenes

The Women: The Legacy

The Women Behind The Women

A grand total of two excised scenes are included, one featuring more material for Bette Midler. Neither is terribly important to the movie, mostly because the focus is taken off of the main characters and placed on ancillary personalities. In the first featurette, the actresses, along with Diane English, explain their on-screen personas and the long gestation period for the movie. The original 1939 version is referenced quite often, along with clips from that film. Funny… that movie isn't available on DVD. Last up is a purely puff piece featuring a student journalist visiting the set to understand what beauty is from the actresses. There are 29 chapter stops.

Score: 5 out of 10

The Bottom Line

One is left with a single question when the end credits run: how did so many marquee names get tangled up in such a pedestrian production? More importantly, why is this disc so mediocre?